


The Elevator

by samchandler1986



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Family History, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 21:05:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17271098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samchandler1986/pseuds/samchandler1986
Summary: Sam and Ruth get stuck in a lift.  A choose your own adventure story.





	The Elevator

The elevator door _tings_ open, revealing Sam. Dressed in what she thinks might be his version of formal wear: mismatched shirt and tie; grey blazer in place of his leather jacket

“Exciting Sunday night plans?” she says as she steps inside.

“No.”

“Oh.”

He’s scowling, avoiding her eyes. A date, then, she’s pretty sure. He’s always _extra_ prickly when he’s nervous about meeting someone—

“What about you? No Russell this weekend?”

“No,” she answers lightly, determined not to be nettled. “I’m going out to meet Sheila for ice cream.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cute.”

“Mm-hm.”

There is a moment of silence and then the elevator judders to a stop, unusually noisy. They exchange a glance. He jabs at the open button, but the doors remain stubbornly closed.

“Okay…”

“Can anyone hear us?” she calls, slightly strangulated. He’s giving her a strange look. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He shakes his head and gives yelling a try too. “Hey! Hey! Is anyone there?”

There is no reply.

“Now what?”

He shrugs and presses the alarm button. Precisely nothing happens.

“Maybe you didn’t—” 

“What, push the fucking button?” He indicates the panel. “Be my guest.” 

She pushes the alarm too, hard, but there’s no sound or light in response.

They turn to look at one another.

“Are we _stuck_?”

* * *

“Try the button again.”

“Why would it be working _now_ when it didn’t the first fifty fucking times?”

“I don’t know. Just try it.”

“ _You_ try it.” 

She gives him a look of disdain, but does as he says. The entire panel seems to be dead. “Nothing.”

“Told you.” He sounds weirdly triumphant, given the implication. Already sitting on the floor with his head against the wall, hands dangling between his knees. “We’re trapped.”

She frowns, thinking hard. “There’s got to be a way out. I don’t want to disappoint Sheila.”

“Yeah, it’s a real blow to not get ice cream…”

She puts her hands on her hips. “As opposed to what?”

“Ugh.” But it’s going to be a long wait for rescue if he ignores the question. “I was supposed to be meeting someone too, alright?”

“A… lady someone?” she teases.

“I mean, I was hoping so.” He closes his eyes. “Now she’s going to think I stood her up.”

“Another first date?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to… um…”

“Lillian,” he prompts.

“I thought it was Sarah?”

“No, that was the one before.” A beat of silence. “ _What_?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all.”

“No, there’s _something_ —”

“It’s just—it seems like a lot—” she starts, hand-wringing awkward, “Of people, I mean. That you’ve managed to… meet. In a few weeks. That’s all.”

He opens one eye to see if she’s teasing. Closes it again, satisfied she’s earnest. “I joined a dating agency.”

“Really?”

“Don’t _laugh_ —”

“I’m not! I mean, that’s— it’s—”

“Uh-huh.” He opens both his eyes, clearly wanting to see her reaction to his next statement. “Debbie did too.”

She’s conscious of her thoughts moving very fast, a tumble of questions. How does he know; why does she care? She realises her mouth is hanging open. “Really?” she says.

“Yeah. We went and signed up together.”

Her mouth twitches, mostly amused as she tries to picture the scene. A weight of guilt and sadness too. Once upon a time it’s the kind of thing she’d have done with Debbie. But of course, the whole reason Debbie _needs_ to go is—

“Don’t get mopey.” 

“I’m _not_ mopey.”

“Well, good, because you need to entertain me.”

She makes an indignant squeak, folding her arms. “Why do I have to do the entertaining?” 

“You’re the fucking actress.” He reaches for the cigarette carton in his blazer pocket.

“Don’t! It’s an enclosed space, and who knows how much air we have?”

“Jesus Christ.” Shaking his head but replacing the pack in his pocket. “ _Fine_. I definitely need distraction now, though.”

 “We could talk about tomorrow’s show—”

“Nope.”

“I just have some ideas about the flying—

“No-o,” he says, drawing out the word. “Talk about something else.”

“ _Fine_.” She takes her own seat on the floor, back against the opposite wall. “How’s Justine?”

He rolls his eyes at her predictability. “She’s ok.”   

“Is she coming to visit?”

“Maybe.” He makes a face. “But, you know, with Rosalie and Brad.”

The succession of first dates is beginning to make a little more sense. “When are they coming?”

He makes an irritated tutting sort of noise in response. “What is this, twenty questions? I don’t fucking know.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do? You don’t want to talk about the show—”

“Alright! Fine! Tell me your ideas about the flying rig!”

She smiles at her knees, amused at his cross-armed cantankerousness. “Start of the second act,” she outlines, “right before Sheila enters…”

* * *

He’s lying on the floor now, blazer pillow-like under his head. There’s probably about enough room for her to do the same at his side, and very little else. But it feels too intimate to lie next to him like that, so she’s curled into the corner instead.

“How long has it been?”

He raises his arm to check his watch. “Forty minutes.”

“Should we try yelling again?”

“Sure, Ruth.”

He doesn’t join in with her shouting and banging, however. Just lies flat, rubbing at his sinuses and wincing. She waits until the echoes have drained away.

“Can you hear anything?”

“Nope.”

“We must be stuck between floors…”

“Yep.”

She sighs. “Shall we… play a game? Or something? To pass the time.”

“Oh, absolutely,” he says, sitting up onto his elbows. “I spy with my little eye something beginning with… e.”

“…Is it elevator?”

“Good fucking guess.”

That’s probably a no then, she thinks, as he lies back with a sigh.  

* * *

**Forty minutes later...**

 "Ok. So, my game is… a bit like twenty questions…”

“Oh, you’re really doing this?”

She throws up her hands. “You have a better idea?”

“… No.”

“The way it works is: I ask you a question but then you have to tell me the answer.”

“Yeah, that’s how it normally—”

“No, no, about _me_. If you get it right the game switches. If you get it wrong, I stay on as the question master. We used to play it all the time back at the Barn as a way to examine our preconceptions… get to know each other better...”

He is flatly disgruntled in the face of her enthusiastic nostalgia. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’ll show you, I’ll show you. Um. How many brothers and sisters do you think I have?”

Shrewd eyes narrow. “That’s easy. None.”

“Right,” she says, slightly taken aback at how quickly he made the call. “Um. Now it’s your turn.”

“Alright. How many brothers and sister do you think _I_ have?”

“You don’t have to ask the _same_ question—”

 “I know that. I get it.” A beat of awkward silence. “What, you don’t have an answer?”

“No, no.” It’s just always _odd_ to think of Sam having parents, birthdays, siblings. To see him as anything other than the jaded cynic staring her down from the other side of the elevator. “A younger brother,” she tries.

“Nope. So, is it my question again now?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Alright.” He catches her expression. “What? If you get it wrong, I have to tell you the answer? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Well, that’s why _you_ pick the question—”

“Christ, this is _worse_ than a first date. At least I’d have the option to, you know, never see her again.”

“Fine! We can play something else. _You_ come up with something.”

He makes another irritated noise in response and they sit in disgruntled silence for a while. Looking at the walls, the ceiling; anything rather than each other. The roof tiles are patterned with dots, she finds. If she squints she can turn the random arrangements into fuzzy shapes.

Maybe she can make pictures from the blur, like clouds in a blue summer sky—

“Technically, the youngest of three. Brother and a sister.”

Her head snaps around to look at him. Expression oddly vulnerable behind his glasses, eyebrows drawn, mustache drooping. She wrinkles her nose, confused. “Technically?”

“Polio.”

Silence buzzes in the wake of that word, her stomach dropping sickly. “Oh. Oh, God,” she manages.

A shrug. “I mean, I don’t remember them. I was just a baby. I got better and they… they didn’t.” He makes a wincing face. “So, does the game always end like this?”

“No,” she manages, still reeling somewhat. “No; normally people steer clear of tragic family history.”

He sniffs a laugh at that. “Still technically my question, right?”

“We don’t have to—”

“No, no, let’s uh – let’s dig into this. I mean, what the fuck else are we meant to do? Um. Have I ever traveled out of the country?”

“Definitely _yes_.” A smile, spreading slow across his face, giving her the confidence to carry on. “Europe. To see the Italian family.”

“Okay, alright. That was an easy one, anyway…”

* * *

“Pull harder.”

“I'm pulling as hard as I can! _You_ pull harder!”

“Jesus Christ! You’re not like this in the ring.”

“Because it’s completely different!” She stops in her effort to prise the right-hand door open; he continues to tug ineffectually on the left. “Wrestling requires communication. This is just… brute strength.”

“Right. You’re right. Stand back.”

“What are you going to do?” she asks, sensible enough to have already flattened herself against the opposite wall.

“Brute strength,” he says, and kicks the door hard. The metal rings like a gong, dented, but not much else happens.

“Sam—”

He ignores her and kicks again, and again, until the metal is warped enough for him to jam his fingers into the crack between the doors. Through his shirt she can see the muscles in his back working as he struggles. A pricklingly uncomfortable awareness of his _maleness_ suddenly strikes her; some part of her brain curious as to what his shoulders would look like _without_ —

The doors finally give way with a metallic shriek, derailing that particular train of thought. They’ve opened onto brickwork. “Uh,” he says.

She comes to join him. There’s maybe a six-inch gap, just enough light to see they are almost exactly between two floors, and nowhere near the ground. Climbing out isn’t going to be an option.

“Hey!” she yells. “Hey! Can anyone hear us?!”

“We’re trapped in here!” His volume makes her wince and press her fingers into her ears. “Hey!”

A rain of dust trickles down from on high. No answering call comes.

“Fuck,” he says. “Well, that was a complete fucking waste of time.”

“At least we’ve got air now,” she points out.

“Right!” He pats his shirt pocket. Unusually, his carton of cigarettes isn’t there. He goes to check his blazer instead, as she retreats to her position against the back wall of the elevator. Making a face as he encounters something unfamiliar in the inside pocket.

He pulls out a hand-rolled thing, that even she’s wise enough to recognize as a joint. “Huh. I forgot about this.”

“You… _forgot_?” Deeply skeptical.

“Yeah, I confiscated it from Justine.” He grins at her, mischievous, a most un-Sam-like expression. “You wanna?”

“No!”

“Oh, come on. We’ve been stuck in here for…” He checks his watch. “… three fucking hours. I think if help was coming it would have arrived by now. Maybe this is how we keep ourselves sane.”

She shakes her head, making her hair flyaway static against the metal panel of the wall. “You’re…” But she can’t quite find the words.

“What?” he says, coming to sit next to her, to stare at the crumbling bricks together. “What am I?” 

“A terrible person,” she says, as he lights up.

“Oh. Yeah. Tell me something I don’t know...”

She takes the joint from his lips instead, and of _course_ she inhales too much, making herself cough and splutter. He laughs at her, a deep chuckle she hasn’t heard for a long time. Everything has been so knife-edge tense: trying to keep the show together; their _souls_ together in the gritty reality of Vegas. It’s been weeks, she suddenly realizes, since they just sat and _talked_ together.

“You alright?”

“Fine,” she wheezes.

“Hmm.” He leans his head back against the wall. “I’m still question master, right?”

She can’t remember, the game petered out quickly after a run of carefully boring inquiries. “Sure,” she says.

“Okay. Alright…” He rubs his hands together, considering the options. “If I could change one thing about myself, what would it be?”

She blinks, surprised at the sudden intimacy of his question. But the answer at least seems obvious. “Your defensiveness.”

“Huh. I was going to say I’d like to be taller, but you’re right, you’re right…”

She laughs. “Same question.”

“Oh, your need to please people.”

“No...”

“Are you kidding me? If it’s not that then it should be.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“It’s why you make bad decisions.”

“Sometimes, maybe.” Sitting smoking marijuana in a broken elevator with him probably chief among them. “But I don’t want to be someone who doesn’t care about other people’s feelings.” He merely raises an eyebrow at this. “ _What_?”

“It’s not about other people’s feelings. It’s about what people feel about _you_. And you wouldn’t hang around with me and Debbie if you didn’t want to know what life on the other side is like.”

She shakes her head. “You and Debbie both care what other people think—”

“Only the people _we_ care about. We’re not holding out for universal popularity because - who gives a fuck?”

“Hmm.” There’s a curious lightness invading her limbs, the yellowish strip lights of the elevator putting her in mind of a hazy sunset. Technically it’s her question. “What do _I_ think of you?”

He considers it. From her perspective, looking up at his face, the twitch of his chin is the giveaway. She likes his chin; the distinctive line of his jaw. Wonders what it would be like to trace the line of it with her nose; her mouth—

And these are _exactly_ the kind of thoughts she’s not allowed herself to think in weeks; since the miserable confusion of his poorly timed attempt to kiss her. It was easier, with Russell around. But there’s a sense, somehow, that this broken elevator is a bubble of time outside of the normal flow of things; that behind the brickwork the world itself might have disappeared, and all that’s left is just the two of them—

She is, she thinks, very _definitely_ high right now.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually, so long in considering his reply she’s almost forgotten her question. “I think that you like me. When I’m not being a complete dickhead.” He looks down his shoulder at her, seeming almost sad. “I think we’re friends.”

She pats his arm reassurance. “We’re friends, Sam.”

“Good to know,” he says sardonically.

He doesn’t flip the question. They both know how he feels about her; can feel it almost like a weight suspended between them. An insistent gravity they’re fighting nonetheless, because hitting the ground will hurt.

That’s something they both know too. 

* * *

Half an hour later they are lying on the floor of the elevator, two hands of the clock at six. Staring up at the dot-matrix roof together. He’s taken off his glasses to better blur the tiles into patterns. “Maybe… maybe fleas on a bedsheet.”

“Ugh, that’s _disgusting_.”

“Okay. Maybe, maybe… the start of a Jackson Pollock painting.”

“You’re not even trying.”

“You’re right, I’m not.”

She points, like the dots are stars in the sky she’s making into constellations. “Look, those ones there are like an eye.” He twists his head, trying to see. And he’s too close, really, his upside-down face only inches from hers. The fact his feet are north to her south is no longer enough.  “… Or maybe a skull,” she hears herself say.  

He sniffs. “Fucking creepy.”

She sighs. “If I die first will you eat me to survive?”

“Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I think we’re going to die in this elevator…”

“No, we’re _not_.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’d be ridiculous. I’m not dying trapped in an elevator.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A psychic told me. I’m going to die in my bed—”

“Well, that’s—"

“—with Janice Dickinson—”

She punches him in the shoulder. “ _Gross_!”

He’s still laughing at his own joke. “Oh, come on. It was – it was funny.”

“Mmm,” she growls, “only because you’re high...”

“And you’re not?”

“I didn’t say… Let’s talk about something else.”

“Sure. Why don’t we play some more of your game? I thought it was pretty good, in the end.”  

She rolls her eyes. “Of course you did.”

“Why’d you say it like that?”

“Because! We just spent half an hour talking about _you_.”

“Hey, it’s not _my_ fault I’m so much better at it than you…” He turns his head, to better see her reaction to his teasing. “Okay, alright. I’ll give you a chance to fucking redeem yourself. You go first.”

“Who was my first crush?”

“Oh, _God_. Really?”

“Mm-hm.”

“How old are you again?” She scowls, opening her mouth to give him his answer— “I’m kidding, Ruth. Kidding. I know how old you are. Okay. So, first crush, I guess we’re talking mid-to-late sixties… Fuck, it’s going to be a Beatle isn’t it? Probably the boring one...”

“Nope.”

“One of the Rolling Stones?” He looks surprised, a tiny bit impressed.  

“No.”

“Alright, I give up. Who was your first crush?”

“It was Charlie O’Sullivan.”

“…Who the fuck is _that_?”

“We went to middle school together.”

He digests this. “Ruth, how the fuck could I possibly know that?”

She laughs, breathless. It’s so funny, from where she’s lying. “I guess you couldn’t. Still—”

“Why’d you like him?”

“I don’t remember... He wasn’t – the feeling wasn’t mutual, anyway.”

“Huh. Bet he’s kicking himself now.”

Her breath catches in her throat for a moment. “Don’t—”

“What? Be nice?”

“Exactly. It’s… disorientating.”

He blows out his lips. “Mine was Ava Gardner, for the record. I saw _The Killers_ when I was fourteen, and Jesus _Christ_..." 

She waits for more, but he’s apparently lost in his memories of the Hollywood golden age. “Is it still my turn?” she asks, eventually.

“Sure, Ruth.” He smiles at the ceiling. “Fire away.”  

**Author's Note:**

> If you have an idea for the next question Sam and Ruth should ask each other, let me know here or over at https://samsylviasmoustache.tumblr.com/


End file.
